


A Sure-Footed Journey, a Purpose, a Quest

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternative Universe - Kingdom, Assassination Attempt(s), Elves, M/M, Royalty, Servants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-17 22:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15471645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: Niall Horan, at the young age of 25, has become the boy king of Ainland.Louis Tomlinson is going to kill him.Or, an attempted assassination and the problem of someone in the way.





	A Sure-Footed Journey, a Purpose, a Quest

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a Wordplay prompt challenge that a group of us are participating in for the prompt "polish". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/polish/works), and to see all fics written as part of the challenge, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works) or find the masterpost for this year’s challenge here.

Niall Horan, at the young age of 25, has become the boy king of Ainland.

Louis Tomlinson is going to kill him. 

— 

On the night Louis leaves home, he gathers all of his siblings together in their den for one final evening together. 

“I likely won’t come back,” he says, the topic too serious in a room full of children too young to truly understand. “Charlotte, as the new head of the household I know you will do well to take care of everyone.”

Charlotte nods once, her expression solemn and determined. She has known the risks, accepted them.

Next to her, Felicite doesn’t look half as convinced. “There are other ways,” she argues. “This can’t be the best option. We need you  _ here. _ With us.”

Louis lets out a breath, looking pained, he holds his arms out for Felicite to collapse into. “It’s not what anyone would have wanted,” he says, just as he’s told her every day since the decision had been made. “But we need to think of the future. Fiz, you need to have a chance at true freedom.”

“And Ernest and Doris need a chance to grow up knowing their big brother,” Felicite says, but it’s defeated. She knows she won’t change his mind.

Daisy and Phoebe sit with Ernest and Doris between them, teary and resigned. Louis knows it’s all for the best, though, even as he’s indulging in one final group cuddle.

He’s doing this for them. It’ll all be worth it if they can live free.

— 

Louis knows now is the time. Niall is young and inexperienced, taking the throne unexpectedly early with the death of his parents. Now is the time - now, when he is unsure of his role in the kingdom. Now, before the citizens become attached.

The cloak Louis has pulled over his head hangs low over his face, hopefully obscuring his features enough to let him blend into the crowd. 

The sky is only beginning to show the first blues of the morning, and the streets are deserted. It’s a long walk from the dens, past the farms and through town to the castle at the far edge, and even having started off in the middle of the night, soon he’s surrounded soon by humans going about their morning lives. The golden morning light reflects on windows and the sounds of animals being herded one way or another with the clack of boots on the cobbles fill the air. Even with the heavy cloak over Louis’s ears, the amount of sound is rather jarring after spending most of his time out among the dens, quiet and serene in comparison. 

He walks on, past the butcher and past the chemist, past the women buying eggs and past the man setting up his vegetables for sale. It’s a little quieter after he walks over the hill at the center of the shop street and continues downward, the steep decline into the valley where the cobbles turn to dirt and end at the river. The bridge over the babbling, glittering river is sturdy, marking the edge of the royal land. Green pastures lay beyond, a steep incline to the top of the hill where the castle sits, and still Louis walks. The sun will be above him before he reaches his destination.

The road here is quieter, similar to the dens, but without the warm, secure feeling of seeing all of his people going about their lives; the quiet, lilting chatter of his friends and family as they move about. Already, he misses it. He might never hear it again, or he might with the rise of the sun tomorrow, but this is the choice he’s made.

It wasn’t an easy one. It was almost a year in the making, and in the beginning there were a number of others who vied to be the one. There had been several meetings; one to speak over whether it should even be considered, one to talk about whether it was worth the risk, and one to debate who should do it. The elders had asked opinions of their people, which only happened in the gravest of decisions. Louis was proud to be chosen. Proud to have the chance to carve out a better future. 

The former king and queen of Ainland were cruel. Terribly, horribly cruel. To humans they were fair and just rulers, but for Louis’s people they were worse than even their predecessors, who had been the first ones to banish them to the dens outside of town. This king and queen, however, were ruthless. They viewed Louis’s people as lower-than-low, made it illegal for them to hold any sort of job working with or for humans, and encouraged punishment, physical and lethal, by the townspeople for anyone caught doing anything viewed as suspicious. It makes Louis sick just to think about the lives his siblings will grow up to live. This isn’t a world for them.

Niall, however, is the only child. With him out of the way, the crown will fall to his distant relative, Liam Payne, a known supporter of Louis’s kind. With him, there is hope for reform. Niall is sure to follow in his parents’ footsteps, and Louis cannot take the chance to find out if he’s wrong about that. 

Most of the humans traveling this close to the palace are delivering food or letters, traveling with cargo or on horseback. Louis checks his cloak as a man passes him going the other way, looking with guarded interest at his dark garb. After he passes Louis briefly shifts the cloak long enough for his long, pointed ears to hear unmuffled, the birdsong so familiar to him. 

The doves are mourning, and Louis walks on.

—

Ainland is a peaceful nation, the closest enemies are across the sea, so while there is a fleet of vessels always ready to go to war, the land is nowhere near as carefully watched. If an enemy were to approach on land, the dens would be the first to know. 

The castle is teeming with nobles, probably there to get their stake in with the new king, but there is little in terms of security. It’s a surprise even to Louis, how little there seems to be. The tall, intimidating stone walls that make up the outer edge of the castle are its ultimate defense, but with the entryway flanked by two well-armoured guards who only look with moderate suspicion on people going through. Louis walks in alongside a man with a cart of chickens, likely heading for the kitchens, and the guards don’t bat an eye. 

He had expected more, ready to scale the side of the castle if needed, but he chalks it up to general disarray after the death of the former king and queen. 

Inside, he navigates the hallways as best he can from what he was told of the layout. Rarely has anyone from the dens had a reason to come to the castle, and if they did they rarely returned. He just needed a place to stay until nightfall, somewhere where he would be out of sight and out of mind until the castle emptied out. 

He finds a home in the hallway that leads to what must be the servants’ quarters, not a cavernous and well-lit stone hall like the rest of the castle, but thinner and darker, with thin windows to let light in and a floor of dirt. A small room, the door ajar, not too far down the passageway seems to contain only unused quilts, blankets, and other linens. The lack of  second exit is a bit worrying, but Louis deems it safe the way the rest of the castle seems to be in no hurry to sniff out intruders, and buries himself between stacks of bedding. 

He waits.

— 

He knows nightfall by the way the footfall in the hallway gradually slows. A few servants have passed by, deep in palace gossip, but the only thing of importance that Louis learned was apparently the personal servant to the king is an outsider, someone who rarely interacts with any of the rest of the staff. That could be someone to watch out for, but Louis isn’t particularly worried. He’s spent most of his life hunting to put food on the table, his knife skills and the apparent lack of protection in this castle have given him a lot of confidence that he might actually make it home to his family. 

He’d like that.

When he leaves his hiding spot, the windows along the corridor confirm that it’s well into the night. This is one advantage that his people have over the humans who reside in the castle - the lack of daylight or torches are of little bother to him as he makes his way down the corridor.

For a castle this large, he really does think that there should be more people about. It’s too easy to get where he’s going; a few guards patrolling through the halls pose little threat, especially when Louis can see (and hear) them coming a mile off. 

Down one hallway, through an ornate sitting room, down another hallway and through a room of portraits larger than he is tall, up a set of stairs and through a smaller, more private sitting room. 

Niall, the boy king himself, should be somewhere within the next few rooms. Louis hasn’t ever seen him, in fact no one he knows has ever laid eyes on him, so he’s going only by description. Blond, like most humans, a little on the short side and walks with a limp from an injury as a child. He has the hints of a cleft chin and a penchant for ruddy cheeks in the warmer seasons. But that’s only what Louis has heard.

He knows there’s someone in the rooms ahead, he can hear footsteps and the tinkle of some sort of metal, like someone were taking the moment to sort through a supply of cutlery for the morning meal. 

He pushes open the door ever so slowly, hoping to get a view of whoever was inside in order to know how best to get past them, but at even the slightest push the hinges of the door let out a terrible screech that would have Louis clutching his sensitive ears at any other moment.

_ Shit. Shit shit shit. _

There’s the clatter of something metal hitting the ground inside the room, and Louis can’t risk whoever it is raising an alarm. He pushes the door quickly inward, the screech sounding once again, and jumps into the room, deftly pulling the smaller of his daggers from his belt. 

A single candle lights the room, but Louis can’t wait for his eyes to adjust to the light. He lunges for the figure, tackling them to the ground and wrestling to get a hand over their mouth; there’s been to much noise from this already, but he can’t risk a call for help. 

Bending over the figure, Louis’s planted himself on their chest and with one hand he’s covered their mouth, the other holding his knife just above their throat, glinting in the candle light. The figure stills; they weren’t putting up the most ferocious of fight to begin with, but Louis can see the way their eyes widen when catching sight of the blade, the way their breathing picks up.

Then, it happens. 

In an instant, Louis recognizes that it’s not a human below him. He should have known already from their lithe limbs, almost imperceptibly smaller and more sinewy than a human’s, but as they’ve been thrown to a floor - and the face Louis has in his grasp is pretty clearly male - his hair has been swept aside, revealing the long, pointy ears that are so similar to Louis’s own.

He sees all that in an instant, and in the next instant everything explodes into a shower of silver. Where his hand is over the man’s mouth, wilver explodes in swirls over his hand, down his wrist and arm, out and across the man’s face and down his neck.

“Fuck,” Louis says. “Fuck- shit!”

The man whimpers, flinching away from him, from the dagger still held to his neck. Louis doesn’t know what to  _ do _ now - he wasn’t prepared for— 

“You’re an _ elf!” _ He’s not sure his lowered voice makes any difference, it feels like they should have woken the whole castle now. 

The silver curling across their skin seems to have stopped at Louis’s upper arm, and halfway down the stranger’s chest under his tunic. The stranger whimpers again, struggling only a little, eyes darting between Louis’s face and the dagger. Louis feels frozen - he wasn’t prepared for this. To find someone like him within the castle walls, where elves can be  _ killed _ for going, but more than that to see those silver swirls bursting forth, the ones elfen children only dream of seeing— 

Soulmate marks.

He’s still frozen, like a deer in lanternlight, the next moment when the door on the far side of the room springs open.

“What is-  _ Harry!” _

Even partially undressed, Louis judges by this man’s purple robes, his cleft chin, his flushed cheeks, that this must be Niall. He’s wearing only his undergarments, but as soon as he sets eyes on Louis and the man - Harry? - below him, he lunges forward, nothing but a candle in his hand to defend himself with.  _ “Get away from him!” _

Louis finally jerks out of his frozen state, dropping the dagger and using both hands to drag the elf up with him, grasping hold of one of his wrists and bending it behind him. His thoughts are at war now, the will to fight, to finish what he came here to start, at war with the will to find out what this elf - his apparent  _ soulmate _ \- is doing here, to find out who he is, to  _ protect him. _

It’s too much. It’s affecting his abilities to do either task well, and he knows it.

The elf in his arms is breathing hard. He groans as Louis twists his arm a little further behind him, making sure he can’t break free. “Don’t- don’t hurt him,” the elf grits out, and Louis isn’t entirely sure who he’s talking to. 

“Let him go!” King Niall commands, although he’s stopped his advance. “What are you - Harry, what has he done? What’s that mark, do I need to call for-”

“He’s  _ fine,” _ Louis says, because some instinct inside of him is telling him to  _ defend himself, defend his soulmate. _ He shouldn’t be talking to the man he’s supposed to kill.

“No,” Harry says more emphatically, and twists in Louis’s grip to try to get a look at him. Louis relents his grip a little, the man’s face a mess of dark curls of hair and glowing silver swirls across his skin. “No- you don’t understand, you can’t kill him!”

“You’re an  _ elf,” _ Louis says again, because even  _ that _ is only starting to sink in. “You’re not even supposed to  _ be _ in the castle, you could be  _ killed!” _

“Harry!” Niall barks again. 

“Stay out of this!” Louis shouts, because he’s entirely lost control of the situation. He wraps his other arm around the chest of the elf in front of him. “What do you mean I can’t kill him? What has he done to you?”

“He hasn’t done  _ anything,” _ Harry says, and Louis can feel the way his chest is heaving, his breathing uneven. “He’s not who you think he is, he’s an  _ elf!” _

Louis stills. He looks up, really looks, at Niall. “No,” he says slowly. “He’s royalty. Royalty is human.”

Right?

But Niall… 

“Half-elf,” Niall says. He reaches up and rubs at his ear, and Louis watches as dark paint rubs away, revealing that his ears are longer than a human’s - not like Louis’s own, by any means, but clearly not of a normal length. 

“I don’t understand,” says Louis. He feels off-balance; half-elves are unheard of, they’re only a rumor among the dens, a whisper told to children to entertain them. 

In his confusion he loosens his grip, and Harry jerks out of his arms. The second he’s free of Louis he runs over, embracing Niall and almost knocking his candle from his hands. Louis can see his shoulders shaking and feels a pit in his stomach. That’s  _ his _ mate over there, he should be running to  _ Louis _ for comfort. 

Everything feels backwards and wrong. 

_ Maybe… _ Louis is right next to the door. He could slip out. Make a run for it. Figure out what to do somewhere where he can collect his thoughts. 

But then he looks down and sees the silver swirls all up his arm. The mark of soulmates is rare enough - he doesn’t want to lose his mate before he’s even met him. This could be his only chance.

“Who are you?” he asks finally, making eye contact with Niall. 

“I’m Niall,” he says. “My mother was the queen of Ainland, and my father was a elf.” He wraps an arm around Harry’s shoulders - Harry, who’s face is still buried in Niall’s neck even as Louis aches to really see his face. “I was raised like a human,” Niall continues. “Never met my dad. Only reason I knew I wasn’t one was the ears.”

“Not the sight?” Louis asks. “The hearing?”

“Not that good,” Niall says. “At least, not good enough to notice. But my mum knew, of course. It’s why she bought Harry here-”

_ “Bought?” _ Louis growls. He knows captured elves in certain neighboring lands are forced into indentured servanthood, but it makes his blood boil - this Harry is  _ his _ Harry now-

“I’m free,” Harry says, cutting in and turning around just enough to look at Louis. “She was- I could have been sold to someone worse. Niall has given me freedom, I stay here for him.”

Louis swallows down the jealousy in his throat. “But why?” he asks, not entirely sure what he’s referring to.

“The king wanted me dead,” Niall says. “Most people who realise the truth want me dead. Have you seen how few people live in this castle? No guard wants to protect a king once he realises they’re not human.”

Louis frowns, biting back the comment on the tip of his tongue.  _ You’re not an elf either. _

If Niall isn’t accepted among the humans, and he’s not accepted among the elves, who is he accepted by? Besides Harry, apparently.

“Why do you stay?” asks Louis. “He gestures behind him, to the door. “You can leave! As a king you’re going to be hated. As a townsperson you might have a chance.”

Niall snorts. “I’ll always be looked down on,” he says. “I’m not a human and I’m not an elf. I know that. At least as long as I’m here I can try to make a difference. I never met my father but I know he died an unfair death because of who he was. I know Harry wouldn’t be able to just walk out of this castle and have his safety assured. I can change that.”

“You can’t change humans,” Louis spits, because that’s what he’s seen since the day he was born.

“I’m a king,” Niall says. “I can change the law.”

“You’ll be killed,” Louis says.

“And then the throne will go to Liam,” Niall replies, not blinking an eye. “Who happens to be one of the few people who have learned what I am without rejecting me.”

Louis stares at him. “You’re mad,” he says finally.

“Absolutely,” Niall says, and then he sighs. “And I’m tired. So if you’re going to try to kill me, I’d like you to get it over with already.”

“What the fuck,” Louis says. “After that speech? Of course I’m not going to fucking-” he runs a hand over his face. “My soulmate won’t stop touching you, which is making my blood boil, but considering you’re not about to try to incite a mob to the dens with pitchforks and torches, you’re about a thousand times better than I expected you to be.”

Harry, to Louis’s immense satisfaction, separates from Niall a little when Louis mentions him. 

Niall, to Louis’s surprise, breaks into a large smile at his words. “For an assassin, you’re one of the better ones,” he says. 

“If I were still here to assassinate you, I assure you that you’d be dead by now,” Louis points out, but Harry squeaks at that and Louis rushes to add, “Not that I’m going to!”

“You’re also the only elf to try so far,” Niall points out.

“How many humans have you had?” 

“Five,” says Harry, speaking up. “This year.”

“Harry’s pretty good with a sword,” Niall says. 

“Only against humans.” Harry looks down. “I’m no good against elves.”

Louis wants to assure him that he’s very good against elves, but the fact that he had him on the floor not too long ago is evidence against that. “Well,” he says. “Sounds like you need another elf here then.”

“Are you suggesting that you’ve decided to guard me instead of assassinate me?” Niall asks. “Just trying to keep track of who’s trying to kill me and who’s trying to keep me alive.”

“Currently on the keep-you-alive-team,” Louis says. “I’m a sucker for an underdog.”

“Fair enough,” Niall says. “Good to know there are two people in the world who don’t want me dead, that’s better than this time yesterday!” He turns to Harry. “Are you okay with him here? Do you feel safe?”

Louis feels like he holds his breath for an hour, watching the glittering silver color splashed across Harry’s face until he finally nods. “He wouldn’t hurt me,” Harry says softly. 

Louis nods, glad that that much is at least clear. “Never.”

“Right,” says Niall. “He was trying to kill you about ten minutes ago but  _ now, _ now he’d never hurt you. That magic silver shite changes everything.”

“Soulmate markings,” Harry says calmly (maybe sensing now offended Louis is feeling). “And half-elves can get them too, so don’t mock them too much.”

Louis revels in the split second of wide eyed shock on Niall’s face before he recovers. “Well you’ll want to get them covered pretty fast if you want to go out in public any time soon,” he points out. “But whatever you say, Haz. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get a bit of actual shut-eye before the sun rises.”

“Goodnight Niall,” Harry says.  _ Yeah, yeah, _ Louis thinks he hears Niall mutter under his breath as he disappears through the door he came through earlier and taking his candle with him. As soon as the door shuts behind him, the room is engulfed into near darkness and Louis takes a moment for his eyes to adjust.

Harry stands mere feet from him, but it feels like miles. This must be the worst way any set of soulmates have met, and Louis feels it weighing on his heart. “Can we start over?” he asks, wrapping his arm covered in silver swirls around his waist.

Harry, his hair a mess and his face half covered in the same beautiful swirls, smiles just the littlest smile. “I’d like that,” he says. “Hello, I’m Harry.”

“I’m Louis,” Louis says, taking a step forward. “I have six siblings back home and apparently I’m a bodyguard to the king now.”

“I only have one sibling,” Harry says, taking a step toward Louis. “I’m officially the king’s silver polisher, unofficially his bodyguard and elf manners coach.”

“Oh yeah?” Louis asks, smiling. “And it looks to me like you also might have a soulmate somewhere around here, judging by that face.”

“I haven’t even  _ seen _ my face,” Harry says. “But if it’s anything like your arm I’d say we’re a perfect match.”

Louis takes one more step forward and Harry meets him in the middle. “I might spend the rest of my life making up for how much I scared you,” he says. “I hope you let me.”

“Happily,” Harry says.

— — —

The minds of humans are not quick to change. 

This is something all elves know, even if they like to hope otherwise. 

Yet, five years since Louis and his family officially moved to the outer rooms of the castle, every servant who lives in the castle knows all too well that the Tomlinson family aren’t human, and they no longer bat an eye when the youngest twins go racing down the corridors in the early hours of the morning. They don’t do more than bet on who will be the next to walk in on Harry and Louis kissing in some deserted corner of or another. They even get up in arms when a visitor begins to complain about the elves who insist on always sticking close to Niall when he attends official meetings. 

No, the minds of humans are not quick to change, but when Louis wakes up on a summer morning and rolls over in their canopy bed to face Harry’s sleeping, snuffling form, he thinks about how this could be something great. The future looks bright.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [LondonFoginaCup](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com) on tumblr, the post is [here](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/176458875719/a-sure-footed-journey-a-purpose-a-quest)


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